Day One: Lay of the Land/Palian

     We have arrived in Trang. The airport was only one room, and the hotel we had booked sent a man with a van to pick us up. Driving from the airport to 'downtown' Trang was a short ride. The side of the road was populated mostly by typical Thai houses, palm trees, and little ditches filled with water. From the satellite analysis, I saw that there were not really any shrimp ponds near or around the airport, but I am anxious, and wish I would have been able to spot one. The hotel is very nice, and last night we took a tuk-tuk into town to grab some dinner. Trang as a city is not really known for anything, but it does have a pretty cool clock tower in the central square.

Arrival, 07/05/12

     So, addressing the problems raised in yesterday's post, I ended up having to scrap part of the project. We found a store that sold the appropriate water quality testing kits only for the three nitrogen factors I aim to evaluate. Unfortunately, the testing kit for phosphorous was not to be found anywhere, and since the package containing the test kits I ordered is stuck at customs, I made a game-time decision to drop the phosphorous testing. Intuitively, I would assume that this will not really affect the conclusions at which I will be able to arrive from my results. Because phosphorous is, as previously mentioned, one of the nutrients that typically limits plant growth, it should be evaluated as a part of a nutrient budget, but could be considered a somewhat separate nutrient budget from the nitrogen one. Both nutrients are important for plant growth, but are derived from different sources in an aquatic ecosystem.

     As I write, my father and I are eating breakfast and waiting for the rental car to be delivered to the hotel. It was raining on and off last night, but the sun is shining, and I am hopeful. My goal for today was just to drive around a bit and cast an eye out to the landscape in search of other problems/opportunities that I may not have already considered. Optimistically, however, there will not be any significant challenges, and we will be able to sample all 25 ponds in the Palian group. Palian, a small town in southern Trang, was one of the center points I chose for the random pond sample. Because it is the most remote of the three towns I chose to use as center points, Palian is the first I hope to get out of the way. Assuming everything goes as planned, we will complete the 25 pond samples around Palian today, and then drive to Kantang, the next center point town, where we will spend the night, wake up, and repeat the same process for the Kantang sample.